Perry Farrell enthusiastic, optimistic about Jane's Addiction

Singer Perry Farrell and his band, Jane's Addiction, have spent much of 2012 touring theaters, creating a show that he promised would be a new kind of immersive experience for fans.

But the band's Thursday night show at Musikfest will offer a different kind of challenge. Where theater settings have allowed Farrell to extend the performing space into the audience, festival shows typically aren't configured to erase the space between the stage and the crowd.

"Those barricades, they're a real bummer," Farrell says in a recent phone interview. "It used to be so nice, even when people would roll up on the stage and stage dive. I preferred that to having people, today, I mean, at the big festivals, you can be 15 feet, 20 feet away from the audience and there's a real disconnect there."

Still, given the reputation of Jane's Addiction as one of rock's most dynamic live acts, chances are that the show will go over just fine. And the bonus is there will also be new music for fans, courtesy of "The Great Escape Artist," the CD Jane's Addiction released last fall. It's only the fourth studio album from a group that has had a stormy, intermittent — and influential — history.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1985, Jane's Addiction — which included singer Farrell, guitarist Dave Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Eric Avery — shook up the music scene with the wiry, kinetic and thoroughly modern style of rock that populated its first two CDs, 1988's "Nothing's Shocking" and 1990's "Ritual de lo Habitual." The two albums that blazed a trail for the generation of alt-rock acts that followed.

But after those two releases, when Jane's Addiction was at a peak in popularity, Farrell broke up the group in 1991, feeling the members were no longer united and trust no longer existed between the band members.

There were a couple of reunions — one in 1997 and a second one in 2001 that even produced a 2003 CD, "Strays" — but neither lasted.

Then in 2008, the classic lineup reunited, first for a performance at the United States NME Awards, where Jane's Addiction received the "Godlike Genius Award," and then for a tour in 2009 with Nine Inch Nails.

The group attempted to start on the CD that eventually became "The Great Escape Artist," booking studio time with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor producing. It did not go well.

"It was a damn frustration, man," Farrell says. "We started out, we wrote a couple of tracks. They were pretty good, but they needed some work. But we immediately butted heads, to the point where there were complete blow-ups, to be honest with you. The band exploded, fighting over, just trying some different notes."

Soon Avery had dropped out of the reunion. In March 2010 the band brought in former Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagen and resumed work on the CD.

Three songs from that period — "Ultimate Reason," "Broken People" and "Words Right Out of my Mouth" — made it onto "The Great Escape Artist." But Farrell says much of the writing fell too close to "derivative straight rock," and McKagen bowed out of the band in September 2010.

Farrell, Navarro and Perkins, though, did not give up on Jane's. With producer Rich Costey onboard, the band resumed work on "The Great Escape Artist." It was Costey who suggested bringing in a fourth musician, TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek — a talented producer in his own right — to join the creative team and play bass on the CD.

Sitek injected a whole new energy and focus into the project.

"He's like a laser," Farrell says, adding that Sitek is also funny and creative. "You have to be right on your mark with him. You can't mess around. When he came in and he wanted to experiment, he wanted to jam. He wanted to take time to create sounds that you'd never heard before, and then work off of those sounds.

"We've always been a band that was learning about music, learning about sound and then giving people the most contemporary sound that we could. And Dave [Sitek] was kind of the vehicle."

The sound on "The Great Escape Artist" has some new facets for Jane's Addiction. The psychedelic overtones and edgy atmosphere remains, but a host of electronic effects and spacey sonics are blended in. Many of the songs are fairly anthemic, while also offering some of the hookiest moments in the Jane's Addiction discography. "Underground" and "Ultimate Reason" both soar behind big, guitar-driven refrains. The tense rock of "I'll Hit You Back" is sweetened by a tuneful vocal melody. And the keyboard textures of "Twisted Tales" bring a warmth to that song that is rare in Jane's Addiction's music.

Being able to finish and release a new album, Farrell says, was important if Jane's Addiction was going to continue as a band.

"What I wanted was, I wanted us to get back together and just come up and create some new songs that the world would remember so we would have some musical currency to go out there and perform again.

"As much as those old songs, they're wonderful, you talk about people having a shorter and shorter attention span, it's true. And there comes to a certain time when you just want to hear something new, something fresh. It's an impulse, stimulation. You want to know what that person is thinking today and what is affecting that person and where they're at today. I felt it was extremely important for the group [to do that]. So for that, I think we accomplished all of that and we lived to see another day.''